question archive What is the Summary of the following text in a short parag :December 24, 2015GenresHIP-HOPJAZZAdvertisement 2015 wasn't supposed to be a good year for jazz
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2015 wasn't supposed to be a good year for jazz. The annual Nielsen Music report was issued early in the year and, if you did the math, jazz ranked as the least popular genre of music — just ahead of children's music. By the end of the year, however, jazz underwent a redemptive arc. In its year-end jazz roundup, the Washington Post declared 2015 as the year jazz reasserted itself, citing the same Nielsen report.
So what happened to change things? It turns out that jazz received a welcome boost from outside the genre from one of the year's most influential records.
About a week after the Nielsen report surfaced in March, Compton, Calif., rapper Kendrick Lamar released his sophomore major label album, To Pimp a Butterfly. As 2015's year-end album lists have rolled in, Lamar's album is one of the most critically lauded records of the bunch, regardless of genre. The album was ranked number one on lists compiled by publications like Rolling Stone, the Guardian and Pitchfork, to name a few.
There are countless things that can be said about To Pimp a Butterfly, as the cavalcade of thinkpieces on the album clearly demonstrated. Helping Lamar garner 11 Grammy nominations this year, the album was undoubtedly a critical and commercial triumph, capturing both the macro-level social tensions in the United States as well as Lamar's own sharply personal battle of struggling and reconciling his fame with his origins. It broke streaming records on Spotify the first week of its release, contained U.S. President Barack Obama's favourite song of the year ("How Much a Dollar Cost"), inspired David Bowie's new record and provided a cathartic outlet for people protesting against police brutality via "Alright."
Editor's note: strong language in the video below.
Kendrick Lamar - Alright
From a sonic perspective, To Pimp a Butterfly is unquestionably a hip-hop record (Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre cameos, natch) that acknowledges its debts to funk and soul with its inclusion of Ron Isley and George Clinton. However, it is also unquestionably riddled with jazz influences. Delving into the making of the album, Billboard described Lamar as "the John Coltrane of hip-hop." And when you take a look at the liner notes, it becomes clear that To Pimp a Butterfly is a critical gateway to some of the most exciting musicians and movements currently happening in jazz.
"I think it's one of the best examples of the last five or 10 years of how jazz is changing and how it's melding with other forms of music," says Chester Hansen, bassist for 2015 Polaris Music Prize shortlisted Toronto jazz rebels BadBadNotGood, speaking to CBC Music.
"If you look at the guys that are on that album too there's a [tenor] saxophone player named Kamasi Washington that is all over the album and he recently put out an album of his own called The Epic and it's like a two-hour long crazy jazz album. But it sounds really modern. Even though there's no rapping on it or whatever, it feels like a modern jazz album, like where jazz is going."
Kamasi Washington - 'Change of the Guard'
Hansen is right — except that Washington's album isn't merely two hours long. At 171 minutes, The Epic's often spine-tingling take on cosmic, spiritual jazz actually pushes much closer to the three-hour mark. Released a couple of months after To Pimp a Butterfly, the album benefitted from Washington's involvement in Lamar's record and is arguably the only jazz record to consistently appear on the same year-end lists the hip-hop artist is dominating.
The Epic includes a 32-piece orchestra, a choir and Washington's own 10-piece band that he has played with since he was a teenager, largely pooled from a collective called the West Coast Get Down. Consequently, the album's title seems like a matter-of-fact statement rather than a chest-thumping declaration.
Kamasi Washington performing "Re Run Home" Live on KCRW
Speaking to CBC Music on a tour stop in Sweden last month, Washington talked about his inspirations for his wide-ranging opus.
"I have two sides to my musical experiences," says Washington who, like Lamar, hails from the Los Angeles area. "I have this band that I kinda grew up with [where] we've played together very free, very wide open, where our music can go anywhere. And then I studied composition and arrangement in school so I've always done horn arrangements, orchestras, chamber groups, I've done some film scores and stuff like that. So I kinda wanted to combine those two worlds in my show."